The Wheel of Accidental Wisdom w/Model Airplane Maker: Episode 124

Welcome to Plastic Model Mojo, a podcast dedicated to scale modeling, as well as the news and events around the hobby. Let's join Mike and Kentucky Dave as they strive to be informative, entertaining and help you keep your modeling mojo alive.

Kentucky. Dave fall is in the air, my friend, we are officially in fall.

The solstice has passed and we're in the heart of the fall. We're in the heart of the model show season. We're ready to go.

Well, we need a little help tonight, because it's the Wheel of Accidental Wisdom and we have a guest in the third chair tonight, mr Chris Wallace from Model Airplane Maker. Chris, welcome back to Plastic Model Mojo. It's been a long time it has been a long time.

Thank you very much.

You're welcome. It's been a long time since we've had him on. We saw him in March.

Well, that's true. It's not like we haven't seen you or talked to you. We do that quite on the regular, but now you're in the third chair, that's right, he's flying this puppy. It's a lot of responsibility here, boys. Did you get the five point harness in the mail? I did. Okay, that's good. Well, cause I'm about to ask you you get on the? You're in the hot seat first, Chris, right, what is up in your model?

sphere. Well, that's very simple. I finally got to starting model studio 2.0. Oh, all right, A recent move, which is maybe recent, you know, quote unquote a year ago I left a nice model studio, moved to a new home and had to set up my bench in the furnace room which, as you can imagine, was a bit of a step down, but I would manage to liberate the bottom part of the L of our L-shaped basement, and recently I had a contractor come in and build me a wall and a door, and so all I need to do is get some lights in there, build my bench and we're back up and running again. So that's kind of what's been going on in my model sphere.

Color me impressed that you brought in outside talent instead of trying to do it yourself, figuring that it was just a giant one-to-one scale model project. But you brought in outside talent to get the job done.

Get the job done and get it done Like he did a great job. I I'd still be looking at the ceiling and measuring, right. I'd still be figuring things out. He just gets it done in two days. So that's the difference, right.

That? That? Yeah, that's what I was going to say. He got it done or you could do it. The schedule is vastly different. Yeah, exactly, we look forward to the progress on that. So we'll have to talk more about that offline at some point. As that goes forward, we look forward to seeing it, so maybe you can do a video on 2.0.

That'd be something. It's funny you should say that. So yeah, I've been taking some video of the progress and I'll be. I have to still have to do the HVAC myself and the lighting. So there's going to be a little bit of that, but, yeah, I have a video cooking, or at least in the works. Does this involve you crawling into a crawl space somewhere? No, no, that was last year. That was thoroughly awful. And the paint booth is going to stay and I'm not going to change it.

I don't want to ever do that again. Well, Dave, what's up in your model sphere?

Well, my model sphere has been very busy. You and I've been doing a lot of plastic model mojo related stuff. We've got the MMCL Invitational Show coming up this Saturday. I've been trying to get stuff together for that. We're going to have a table there and we're going to record some. And I've been breaking my wallet, which we'll talk about later. Oh, my model sphere has been busy and a little bit scattered, but it's been good. How about yours?

Well, we've got our secret project we've been working on yes, we've got to the near the end of phase one of that folks. We got this new platform we're talking about and we just got, I guess late last week, the, the actual navigable preview for that and it looks cool, looks good.

We're going to be working on that. We owe those guys some feedback and some information to get that going off the ground. Get that off the ground finally, hopefully in a couple months. Other than that, man, I'm just looking forward to this show. We have our club, mmcl, in Louisville, and looking forward to Saturday and talking to a lot of people.

Yes, I am looking forward to it too. We basically have been sheltered in place since the middle of July in the Nationals, which you come down off the Nationals. It takes a while, but I'm ready to get back out there and see other modelers and get together and talk and basically have a good time. So I'm looking forward to it.

Well, that's pretty much my model sphere, Dave.

Okay, well, mike, do you have a modeling fluid? I do. What is your modeling fluid?

I have Cooper's Craft Barrel Reserve Kentucky Straight Bourbon Whiskey oh my.

This is a new one.

It's a new one. So more about that at the end. What about you or Chris? What about Chris?

Well, yeah, chris, I think, is heavily medicated and I don't think they allow him to to have any alcohol. That's not nyquil related, right this is true.

You speak the truth. I. I'm coming off of a cold, so I've got some hot tea here. It's decaffeinated. I got water, I got halls. I wish I had a scotch or something to join you guys, but I'm just going to have to play it like this for now.

It's all right as long as the hot tea gets you through the episode. That's the important part.

Yeah, we don't need you to start talking stupid halfway through this thing. So, Dave, what do you?

got, mike? I've got something from your neck of the woods Country Boy Brewing, king Me Double Dry Hop, new England IPA. I'll admit this is the first time I've had this.

Yeah, it's just down the road, man. That's going to be kind of stout, though Go for it.

Well, we'll see how it goes. Hang on, that's not bad. That's going to get me through the episode for sure.

Well, good, because we've got to get through the episode. Let's get through the episode, man. Our first segment we're going to tackle tonight is listener mail, and I'll tell you, since the last episode we've gotten quite a bit Now. We've curated this down to the ones that are primarily modeling content and the ones that are relevant to well, a lot of. It's the last episode, actually, yeah. So, chris, your comments are certainly welcome. Oh, great. So or else you're just going to sit there and listen to us burn through this stuff. You have experiences too, because you're a well-established and fine modeler, so your opinions count.

First up, dave and Chris, is Gary Stausmakat. From where's he? From Williamsport, pennsylvania, and he's not written in in a while. He acknowledges that and he wants you to know, dave, that he too has used Future Thinned with Mr Color Leveling Thinner and has not had any issues. Good, I'm going to try that soon. He also screamed amen when I was expressing my displeasure with VMS satin varnish experience. He's never had a complete blockage, but he does see it gum up his airbrush and make things sticky all around. He stopped airbrushing it altogether. He's had some good experience with SMS paints. Now currently they only have a gloss and a flat, but he's been told by SMS. You can mix the two to get a semi-gloss or satin finish and you know.

Yeah, that makes sense.

When they finally offer a satin finish. That's what they're going to do to give it to you. We'll come back to that one in just a second. But finally, he really enjoyed the 1 to 144 scale episode with William Adair and he's recently kicked the Optivisor to the curb and picked up a pair of 4X and 5X reader glasses. He never thought about using those and it was a great tip, so good thing. I'm going to flick into that. Me too. Me too, my Optivisor gets a little hot Now. Chris, I know you use the eyeglasses style thing, but not quite reader glasses.

What do you think about magnification? I listened to that episode. I also never thought of using dollar store glasses for that purpose, and it really had me interested. I like my visor, but it, it, it makes me look a little bit crazy. It's that white one that fits over top of your head and yeah, but it really works. I mean, I like it, it works for me, um well, you're down in your basement modeling.

It's not like there's a beauty contest going on.

Certainly not, but my 10-year-old daughter has a few comments every now and then when she sees it.

I was about to say Daddy, you look weird.

Yeah, but daughters will tell you that, no matter what, that's true.

Well, have either of you used any of the SMS paints?

I have not and I'm curious about them. You know I should have talked to really was curious about them. I should have talked to Goldfinch when he was up here floating in my pool. Everything I've heard from people who've used them has been very, very positive.

Like you need another line of paint, Dave.

Yeah, like I need that, like I need a hole in the head. In fact, one of the things I'm going to be interested to see as Chris builds out his new modeling studio is how he handles paint storage. Well, that's a good segue actually.

Oh good, I'm here. Next email is from Dr Paul Budzik. Oh no, and Dr Paul sent a photo that I can't share on the podcast because it's his audio podcast. Here's how I store my evergreen strip stock. Now, what he's done? He has capitalized on the dead space between a hanging cabinet door and the shelves in there. The shelves don't quite come out to the frame on most wall cabinets, so there's about a quarter to half inch of dead space in there behind the door. He's got coffee cup hooks on the backside of the door with his strip stock hanging on those.

Okay.

So, Chris, there you go, man.

That's a great use of dead space.

So when 2.0 gets to your cabinetry there's a tip from the good doctor. He's full of them. He is. I know you're a fan. I am a big fan. Up next, from Elkton, Kentucky, Dave, it is Warren Dickinson. Maybe we'll see him Saturday. We will.

He was not going to be able to go because of a family function, but that got canceled, rearranged, so my last conversation with him was that he will indeed be there well his.

He sent two emails. The first one is in response to the storage space. Now he's cursed with the deep drawers, with his work bench. So he cut two strips to fit on either side of the long axis of the drawer you know the motion direction of the drawer right and he made a tray that sets sits just on top of those strips on either side so he can get a shelf basically in his drawer. Now that's, that's a good idea. If you got deep drawers, I still, I would just rather just not have them to begin with yep.

No, I agree with you. It ends up being wasted space in most. In most cases, does he ever set?

up so he can slide the thing. Yes, yes, yep, he does exactly.

Yeah, that helps, but you'd never put so he can slide the thing back and forth. Yes, yes, yep, he does Exactly. Yeah, that helps, but you'd never put so much crap in the bottom that you couldn't slide the top anymore, would you? No, that never happened. Never happened. That's a loaded question. Yeah, well, and then his second email was in regard to the aviology Japanese tail codes.

Yes regard to the aviology Japanese tail codes yes, he verified through them that they are in fact revising and reprinting that set Should be available end of October, early November time or mid-November timeframe, and 72nd scale and for 48th scale early in the 2025 new year.

I've already set a reminder on my calendar incember to check that, because as soon as they become available, I'll be getting one of of every color well, chris, you got those in 48 scale?

I don't, but I'm very interested. It's a pretty cool set. It's, uh, all the the characters and numbers and hyphens and stuff to do, japanese tail codes, their stuff is really good too.

Yeah, I'm not sure how they'd look on a Corsair, but you know.

Dave. The next two are a couple of shows. We just had a show, spotlight Double Bill. We've got two more shows we're going to mention here. Okay, first is from our friend Chris Doppler, up in the Duneland chapter of IPMS, up in Hobart, yep, and you know we saw him. He was helping out the national team as a volunteer.

Yes, he was.

Their 2024 contest and SWAT meet is October 12, 2024 at the Hobart Moose Lodge in Hobart, indiana, on 143 South Hobart Road. That's easy to remember.

Yeah, we need to just quit our jobs and then we can go up and hit that show and then go from there to Chicago, to MMSI. Just work thing, the heck with it.

We could kill a week in Chicago waiting for the other show.

Exactly my point, my man.

And the other one's a show that's from Tim Cavalier, longtime listener to the show, and this is Show Off the Good Stuff Scale Modeling Show and Contest IPMS Palouse Area Modelers is that right? P-a-l-o-u-s-e. Yes, that's Palouse and that is in Moscow, Idaho. Oh, okay, and the date October 5th. So that was coming up actually before the Duneland show, but it's a little further away. If you are within a commutable distance to either of these shows, please, please, make every effort to attend, because they need your support and you need to go have some fun.

Oh yes. So listen, whether or not you enter, go to shows. If you're not going to shows, you are missing a big part of modeling and you're missing a lot of the social stuff, which is really some of the most enjoyable stuff.

Chris, you got any shows coming up in Canada?

I have one actually in my hometown. Here it's this weekend. I'm not sure when this episode is going to be out.

It's going to drop Friday or Saturday of this week, so right now it's the 25th of September, so Okay, well, on Saturday, the I guess it'd be the 28th there is a the Ottawa scale auto contest.

There you go, ottawa scale auto contest, and it's run through the hobby center here in Ottawa and it's all day at the armory on walk the road and it's all day at the Armory on Walkley Road, and yeah, so that's the only local one that I know of and I think, going into the fall, I certainly don't know of any other that I'll be attending, but I'll definitely be at the one on Saturday.

You'll be at a show. We'll be at a show. We can send pictures back and forth. That'll be enjoyable.

Up next from the city of brotherly love, dave Norm Stubbe. All right, first is he wants to share an unexpected benefit of the show. His wife and daughter, while not really modelers, are both of the creative and artistic bent and sometimes they sit around the table together painting figures or working on whatever each of them wants to work on. And many of the topics we discuss on the show pop up in conversation because they're universally applicable to other kind of artsy kind of projects. They'll talk scope, creep, shelves of doom and all that great stuff.

Yep, that is true. That is something a lot of people miss. This is, at its heart, an artistic endeavor and therefore has a lot of things in common with everything from model railroading to dollhouse building, to miniature figure painting, to Warhammer. A lot of these things are just universal.

There you go, chris. You can work an angle with your daughter, you can talk about scope, creep and shelves of doom. Well, the real meat of his listener mail, dave, is about a pet peeve.

Okay, we haven't done pet peeves in a long time.

Well, this is a good one. His pet peeve is vague or straight-up, misleading box art. Oh, I agree and this is because we've mentioned it on the show with steve houstad numerous times a website that is essential for anyone buying 172nd scale figures. I wonder if steve knows about this. The website is plastic soldier Review and I've actually been on this website and they break down you know what's in the box. There's usually photographs of all the poses, what kind of material they're made out of, et cetera, et cetera, and there's just a vast array of these things. Now, granted, probably I'd say I'll be conservative and say 75% of these figures are of the soft plastic variety, but not all of them, right, but anyway, he can get on there and search the manufacturer, time period, all these keywords doesn't really matter. They got photos of all the figure poses, the figure count in the box. He checks Plastic Soldier Review on his phone or wherever, every time he's about to buy something or thinking about it.

So saves him both money and buyer's remorse yes, because that's that, and especially now with things just exploding as far as figures, especially with 3d figures is that you never know what the quality is if you haven't seen it somewhere. So if there's a review site where you can go and look, that's fantastic.

Well, I'll be surprised if the 3D stuff's on there. I think this is mostly the conventional stuff. But finally, thanks for raving about Three Floyds. It led him to the Three Floyds Variety Pack. Good choice. His favorite is Age of Otters. India Pale Ale.

Okay, that's one of their newer ones. And speaking of Three Floyds, I was in the liquor store today. They're getting into the canned cocktails now. Oh, come on, man. Well, it may not be our cup of tea, but if it makes their business more successful, you and I are absolutely fans of it.

Mike, when you said earlier about misleading box art, was he getting at like old figures or old models in a new box? Was that sort of the flavor of that?

He didn't really specify, but I don't see your 48 scale guy. So you don't have this. I won't call it a luxury, you probably don't have this situation crop up, but there's a wide variety of makers of 72nd scale plastic figures Kind of in the spirit of like the Matchbox and airfix, soft plastic figures right in ho or ho double o or 76 or 72nd scale, and a lot of these figure sets have some dramatic painting style artwork on the front but no picture or window in the back or picture on the back that actually shows you what you're getting in the box. So it's a, it's a crap shoot. So I think that's what he's getting at I thought he was getting at.

I think there's a couple of manufacturers I won't pick on any in particular, but they'll. They'll rebox something with awesome, awesome art and it almost looks like it's just been made, and then you get it home and you find out quite otherwise well, I'm sure there's some of that going on too for a while airfix was kind of blurring those lines and I think they got some blowback for it.

And so now they have done they've gone Out of their way to distinguish a new mold from a vintage or classic airfix kit, so that you don't accidentally buy the old C-47 kit thinking you're getting the new C-47 kit.

Up next Mike Ida-Cavage, our old friend from down in the Atlanta area. Yes, mr Space, now he's got a little some tips for our foreign listener who was looking to come to the United States and do a tour.

Yes.

With his wife before they start having kids. He's got some stuff there so we need to work on that, yes. And then, when it comes to gloss coats, he's an Alclad to Aqua Gloss fan, yep, and he used Future for years but found aqua gloss to be much more consistent when it comes to applying it. It's a similar acrylic to Future, but it's like a milky white emulsion. Yeah, I've seen it in the bottles Yep. He says not to shake the bottle, just pour it directly in the airbrush and go. Yeah, that's interesting because I know when I shake the VMS stuff it really foams, really bad.

Yeah.

And if you put that foam into your color cup.

Then you're spraying air bubbles.

It does fun stuff. Aquagloss Either of you used AquaGloss.

I have used the Alclad Lacquer Gloss. I have not used the AquaGloss, although I have a bottle of it. Of course, I have a bottle of everything, which is part of my problem.

What about you, Chris?

Well, when we get into the benchtop discussion, I'll tell you why. I'm about to use the Aqua Gloss, but I've yet to use it.

All right, that's good, it's all just coming together, man.

This is a teaser, unplanned teaser.

Finally, dave, from the email side of things, Mr Bruce Bingston. Bruce heard my comments about my carousel, of my tester's carousel for square bottles. That has no tester's paint in it but it's full of old Pactra paints Pactra authentic international color, to be specific. Now he dug a little deeper than that and sent me scans of Pactra's mixing charts for all these national colors and camouflage colors.

Yep, they actually have put out a chart to tell you how to use, because their paints weren't FS colored or BSC colored or whatever. So they gave you a chart to tell you how to mix to get to the color you wanted.

Which is interesting because his information predates the Authentic International line, because they ended up bottling all those colors in this new kind of domestic US domestic Humber equivalent.

Yeah.

In the seventies and early eighties.

Yeah Right, I guess a lot of people got tired of mixing.

Probably, chris, you old enough to remember Packer paints.

I'm not. No, I never. I never even seen them for sale.

Well, damn you, he's a young man.

That's okay. He'll end up inheriting our stashes and that's our revenge, all right.

Dave. That's it, man. What do you got from the direct message side of the world?

Well, a couple of direct messages. We've got a lot of them. A number of them were feedback on the last episode, a number of them were directed towards you and the VMS Saturn issue and I won't go through all those. Dave Waples heard me mention the 72nd scale SBS Dauntless engines for the Dauntless 1, 2, 3, 4, and then a separate engine for the 5. And it turns out the recommended kit for those is the old Hasegawa kit in 72nd scale. So he reached out to SBS, took the bull by the horns, reached out to SBS and said, hey, do these work in the new Flyhawk?

kits.

And the response he got was we don't know, but we're getting a couple of the Flyhawk kits to find out, and they promised to let him and everyone else know.

So I'll be interested to see what their experiments reveal. You mentioned Warren Dickinson's emails and he had sent me a DM, and it's something a lot of people do and occasionally one of the listeners will mention it. He's now finally going back and starting to carve through all of the episodes from the beginning, and so it's really interesting that you know, as he's carving through the episodes, he comes across something and will mention it and I'm like, oh yeah, I remember that I haven't thought about it in two or three years because it was mentioned on an episode two or three years ago. But yes, listen, I encourage all the listeners if you are a more recent listener, please, you are more than welcome to go back to the beginning and carve through all those old episodes. Among other things, you'll see how much better Mike has gotten at editing and how much of a quality product we have now. That's a compliment. That's a compliment. That's a compliment.

I know I was just feeding off Chris's chuckle there.

Yes, well, let's see. Charles Rice reached out to give you a little report on Greenville Tennessee show that he attended. Finally, paul Hayward, listener, sent me notice of a show, posted a show flyer, but he posted it on Instagram and I told him to post it in the dojo. Anybody who listens to this show, who has a club, who's having a contest and you have a contest flyer nearly every show has a contest flyer you are not only welcome to, but encouraged to post the flyer on the dojo, let people know. One of the things about the dojo is it's a community, and one of the things we want in the community is letting people know hey, there's a show nearby. If you're free, you might want to go Because, again, we're big fans of model contests on this podcast. So please feel free to post your flyer on the dojo. Is that it man? That's it man.

Any closing remarks? Chris, no, none.

He wishes he was drinking a scotch. Guys, if you're out there and you're listening to Plastic Model Mojo and you have a friend who a modeling friend who doesn't listen to Plastic Model Mojo, please recommend our podcast. Please assist them, if they need it, in showing them how to obtain a podcast app and listen to our show. That is the single greatest way for us to get new listeners. There are lots of modelers out there that we haven't reached yet and we want to reach as many of those folks as possible, so please do that.

And just to that. Please check out all the other podcasts in the model sphere and you can do that by going to wwwmodelpodcastscom. That's model podcast plural. It's a consortium website set up with the help of Stuart Clark from Scale Model Podcast up in Canada, where Chris is from, and you can check out all the banner links there to get the other content from the other podcasts. We'd appreciate you helping us with the spirit of cross promotion and checking those out. In addition, we got a lot of blog and youtube friends in the model sphere. We got jim bates, scale canadian tv. Please check out his youtube channel. Stephen lee, sprue pie with frets a great blog long and short form material there. Check out what stephen's doing. He's always got something great going on on his blog. Jeff Groves, Inch High Guy Inch High Guy blog all things 72nd scale.

Please check out his blog and hopefully we're going to see him on Saturday.

Yes, we are, because I've got to pick his brain. Evan McCallum Panzermeister36. Check out his YouTube channel and see what he's been up to. He's killing it. And finally, the one who's going to get the spotlight here, mr Chris Wallace model airplane maker, blog and YouTube channel. Chris, now's your moment to pitch the heck out of it. Man. What's going on?

Well, since the last time I've been on your show, I'd say that the no, we're not going back that far. It's quite a bit different, but through a number of different ways of doing videos, I think I've improved over time. I now have a surprising amount of subscribers and I'm still having a lot of fun with it. So I guess the last video was about my visit to the Atlantic Canada Aviation Museum, which was you know, it's really just to hook you in because the hobby shop that's attached to that museum was absolutely mind-boggling. I don't think that I've ever seen anything like that in an aviation museum.

That was a great video and, yeah, I'd have never known that that existed. Not only the museum, but that it had that great a hobby shop attached to it, had it not been for your video.

So coming up next I have a few videos that I'm going to do on a CF-104, the Starfighter or the Zipper and a couple of other of you know some strange off-the-wall but hobby-related content as well. Something a little bit different, some strange off-the-wall but hobby-related content as well, something a little bit different.

Well, I can't wait your videos, man, you're killing it. The quality is really great. Subscribe to the channel. I can't tell you how happy I am when I see a new video drop. Thank you, You're welcome. Finally, if you're not a member of IPMS Canada, IPMS USA, IPMS Mexico or your national IPMS chapter, please join. Also, if you are an armor modeler or a post-1900s figure modeler, if you're not a member of the Armor Modeling and Preservation Society, AMPS, please join. They are great organizations that do a lot for modelers, a lot of it hidden in the background, and it's all volunteers giving up a little bit of their modeling time to try and make your modeling experience a little bit better. So please join.

Well, guys, let's have a word from our sponsor.

Plastic Model Mojo is brought to you by Model Paint Solutions, your source for harder and steam back airbrushes, david Union power tools and laboratory grade mixing, measuring and storage tools for use with all your model paints, be they acrylic, enamels or lacquers. Check them out at wwwmodelpaintsolutionscom.

Well, guys, we're to our feature segment. I love this I can't wait. All right, man, it's been a little while. We've repopulated the wheel of accidental wisdom and maybe we'll stagger into some accidental wisdom. Here we have three hopefully sound minds, with some wisdom behind them.

Well, we've got one sound Canadian mind and two podcast hosts.

You take what you can get.

Yeah, exactly, dave, you ready, I am ready. Chris, do you have your five-point harness secured, secured?

and ready to go.

All right, all right.

All right, spin the wheel.

Thanks for everyone who submitted some questions for the wheel and keep them coming, because we've got to keep this going, man. We've got to do this at least I don't know two, three times a year. Come on, yes, we need some more. We need some more. So let's get the first spin underway, guys. What is been underway, guys?

what is your favorite?

nostalgia kit. Chris, you get to go first because you're our special guest that's a great one my favorite nostalgic kit. Yeah, whether you want to build.

Build it or not. What is your favorite old oldie?

I built it and I'd love to do it again sometime. It would be the Monogram F4, f4j and the boxing in particular was I think it's the only kit, or certainly the first kit, that I bought specifically for the box art and it's featured sort of almost a head-on view of it climbing as the gray, the navy gray, and it has that eagle on the tail. I think it's showtime 100. That's the.

Those are the markings yeah and I totally, completely muffed that kit as a kid I was about 12 years old. I I spent all my money on it and of course got a big old tube of orange glue and a couple of bristle brushes for paint and completely destroyed it. But absolutely couldn't wait to get that thing home and build that thing. I'd love to try it again, just to see if I could do a slightly better job on it.

I suspect you could. I suspect you could. It's amazing you mentioned the box art, because it definitely when you're a kid and you're first into modeling box art is really compelling. Oh for sure about this kit before the revel 30, second scale huey the gunship the one.

Yeah, the box art is the half collapsed bridge.

Yep, shooting up the bridge, shooting up the bridge, that I got that probably as an eight or nine year old as a birthday present. In fact, I remember david and doug reeves the kids next door came to my birthday party and they brought me that as a present and I remember I remember building that and man was that cool. And, yes, I botched that kid up so bad that I used too much glue on the blades and then they kept sagging and my solution was to add more glue.

Was that kit later reissued with like an actual photo of the completed model on the cover?

It may well have been because in the US in the 70s and 80s the Federal Trade Commission started to crack down on model companies and their box art illustrations as being quote unquote deceptive. So a lot of manufacturers went to actual photographs of their built up kits, which in many cases were not done by people who were professional modelers, and that was probably the nadir of box art on kits.

So, mike, it's a tough choice between two. They're both were both sold to me as a kid via box art, so we've got a common theme there and I think that's. I think that's probably why they did it that way. Yeah, and I think that's probably why they did it that way. Yeah, One is a 32nd scale Revell P40E. I think the Flying.

Tiger Boxing. Oh, the Flying Tiger Boxing.

Yeah, those paintings were awesome.

Oh yeah, kit, not so much, but I think I actually got that one together for the most part. And oddly there's a website out there where a guy works through that kit and you know, oh yeah, he lays that revel kit on some 30 second scale blueprints and I mean it's. It's as close as you could expect, expect, reasonably expect for for a kit at any point in history. I mean it was yeah for for accuracy of shape. It was pretty good. Now it's got some quirky gimmicks in it, like the folding landing gear and all that. That's right, but it's a good one. My other one, chris, is an F4. Probably I can't remember it's probably an E. It's the Revell 72nd scale kit of it climbing off the runway in an electrical storm.

Yeah, I remember that. I don't think.

I've seen that one. Yeah, it's a shark, shark mouth and there's this lightning. The lightning strikes in the background of the of the photo, or of the of the of the painting. Yeah, look it up, yeah, that's awesome yeah I built that on my grandparents uh dining room table when I was a kid, over a long weekend at their house. So yeah, it came out great too, because it was. It was molded in tans. You only had to paint the green right well, two, well, two greens.

But yes, you know it's amazing, none of us are spring chickens here. But you can remember not only the kit but you can remember where you built it. Like I can remember getting that Huey as a birthday present for my eighth or ninth birthday as a birthday present for my eighth or ninth birthday. I mean it's amazing how impactful those kits were to our memory, that they still stick in our memory that hard all these years later let's spin the wheel, man you got it.

By the way, I noticed new wheel sound no, this is the one that nobody liked last time, so sorry folks but the wheel says what tools or materials do modelers pay too much for dave? You go first this time.

Sanding sticks. I'm actually okay. I'm going to take a contrarian view here and say that being too cheap with your modeling supplies never pays off, and this I will hearken back to something that I know Mike will remember. He knows where I'm going with this. He knows where I'm going with this.

I know where you're going with this the great tweezer debate between you and, oh God, mac John McIntyre, a club member, and John was just singing the praises of these really cheap tweezers that he was getting and he didn't understand why people were paying good money for tweezers when you could get these tweezers cheap, wherein you then explain to him that none of the tweezers that he was buying actually closed at the tip.

And they're dead soft and you look at them wrong. And they're dead. And they're dead soft and they've you look at them wrong. They bend exactly that.

so I'm gonna go opposite of the of the idea of this question. I think that it's really a mistake to cheap out on a lot of supplies. Another example I'll give you is X-Acto blades. You can buy knockoff number 11 blades that are coming out of some factory floor in China and by factory floor I mean these are ones that are probably swept up off the floor and sold, packaged and sold, and they're awful, whereas if you buy actual number 11 exacto blades, yes you're gonna pay a little more for them, but they're all sharp, they're all consistently shaped, they've all got a consistent sharp edge to them, them Even going to sanding sticks. Yeah, you can go to Sally Beauty Supply and there's room for this in modeling Going and getting some rough nail sanding sticks, but they don't go up to $2,000, $3,000, $4,000.

Exactly.

Where it is worth money buying the quality sanding sticks, the Infini or the Dispay sanding sticks in the higher grits. It is well worth buying them because of the fact that you do you get them in grits that you can't otherwise get and they're much longer lasting. And yeah, you pay a little more for them, but again, you're paying for quality. So I'm going to flip that question on its head and say in general, I think that modelers are better off spending a little bit extra to get the quality supplies.

Well, Chris, are you going to answer the wheel question or Dave's question?

I'm going to answer Dave and although normally I agree with absolutely everything that ever comes out of Dave's mouth, I'm going to have to slightly disagree with him on this, with respect of course All right.

No, no, I'll take it. I completely disagree with him on this, with respect, of course, all right.

No, no, I'll take it. Although, just to go back to the tweezers, if you want to save time in your modeling, buy good quality tweezers. It avoids you looking for pieces that go five meters away when they snap and fly off the bench. With a good quality tweezer that won't happen. You'll get so much more modeling done. So that answers the tweezer question. But I gave up on exacto blades, I'd say about 10 years ago, and I went with scalpels. I get a scalpel blade and I could get scalpel like a box of scalpel blades for five bucks. They're the non-surgical kind, so you certainly couldn't do some amateur surgery with them. But you could do a lot of fantastic modeling with them and because they do go dull fairly quickly, you switch them out. You always have a nice fresh blade. It's not that expensive. So that's what I would say Don't get the knockoff 11 exacto, whatever it is. Go get yourself a nice handle scalpel handle and get yourself scalpel blades.

I am a huge believer in scalpel blades. In addition to having exactos with number 11s and some other blades, I have a couple of Swan Morton handles and a whole bunch of those scalpel blades, of those scalpel blades. And yeah, there are some jobs that a scalpel blade is much better suited to than an exacto blade. Now, vice versa as well you can scrape with a number 11 exacto blade a whole lot better than you can with a scalpel blade. But I wholeheartedly agree with you in that regard that, in addition to exacto blades, scalpel blades are important to have and really useful. And yeah, you can pick up some non-surgical scalpel blades fairly inexpensively, mike.

Oh, it's me, it's you, it's you Brass toothpicks.

Stay tuned, folks you still haven't found a use for one of those huh no, that they're.

They're the same uses you get from a wooden toothpick and we have. We have found a brass toothpick alternative. Oh, more on that news at 11.

Yes, that's coming, but now I I will slightly disagree and I confess to my previously. Evan, as a joke, gave me one of these brass toothpicks and while I certainly wouldn't go out and spend the money on them, I've got this thing on my bench and I use it all the time. It is for scraping away and chipping at paint or applying super glue. It's really useful and I like it.

That's been a dang wheel. You got it Black base, pre-shade or post-shshade? I guess I'm first. This time I'm gonna have to lean on my last project, which I did not black base. I primed it in in gray. I guess I pre-shaded it. Or as evan would say, we bring. We mentioned evan again.

I pre-saturated it gotcha I went over the the gray primer with the different clear coats and blues and greens and yellows and orange combinations to make oranges and whatever purples, mauves, and did all that. I'm still considering and now I've gloss coated. I maybe I've painted myself into a corner, but I do on on this. Um, this is in reference to the E16, the float plane I'm working on maybe doing some post shading at some point. I've got a lighter shade of my base green for the top side mixed up already. I just haven't used any of it yet. We'll see. We'll see where that goes, but uh, I guess right now I'm a pre-shade guy. Okay, chris.

I've done all three. I think that anyone who's getting started with you know, going from just spray, spraying a plane or painting it with brush and you want to do something a little bit different with your, your airbrush, I think the safest or the easiest approach is a pre-shade, where you just do the panel lines in black and you. You can then spray the, the, the top coat over that and you get a very nice yet sorry, your, your, your finish has a bit more depth to it. It's a very easy thing to pick up and it's relatively easy to accomplish. There's no way you can really screw it up Like you just can't.

Yeah, you really can't mess it up.

And you can even do that with a fairly basic airbrush. You don't need to have, you know, a 0.001 needle on an airbrush. You can do that with even a medium grade Badger airbrush, no problem. I think when you graduate from there you get a little bit more confidence. Yeah, try the marbling or the black basing. I think that post-shading is kind of like the last version of it. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but I think that's the least forgiving, because by the time you're getting to the post-shade, if you make a mistake it's a little bit harder to fix. But maybe I'm wrong about that.

Well, like Chris, I'm tri.

I've done all three.

My current method, the one I like the best is to black base overall and then go in and vary panels with marbling and then opaque application of the paint so that some of the black base and some of the marbling shows through very subtly.

Post shading is a good tool in your toolbox because something you'll find out is you're never, whatever technique you use, you're never as stark as you need to be, because by the time that you gloss, coat and decal and whatever, it's amazing, the amount of what you thought was really stark contrast just disappears. Contrast just disappears. And one of the ways to deal with that, where you have under contrasted, is post shading. Now I agree with with Chris that it's not as forgiving, although it's not completely unforgiving, because if you're post shadingshading and you get the effect a little too heavy, you still can go back and apply your base color or one of the camo colors or whatever to work it out. But yes, if you make a mistake, it is something that takes a little more work to correct, whereas if you're working over a black base and you're applying your base color to it or you're marbling to it, a mistake at that point is almost irrelevant because, unless it's a big mistake, it's going to disappear into the contrast as a whole.

I think when Mike was first talking about the float plane, my my advice to him was, with appreciating, was be prepared to walk away. Yes, get, get that appreciating done. Do do some of the top coat and then take, take a take a break and then come back to it. Don't feel that you have to do it all in one go, cause the one mistake you do right, take a break and then come back to it. Don't feel that you have to do it all in one go, because the one mistake you do right, like the one classic mistake you do with appreciating, is that you obliterate it. You just absolutely obliterate it with a thick coat of top coat. But if you take your time, you walk away, you come back to it and it's like, okay, maybe a little bit more here, a little bit more there, you can build it up slightly.

Yes, absolutely. You are 100% correct in that regard. And I took your advice. Maybe I'll get it done one of these days. Well, you're getting there.

There's a gloss coat on it. That's good. Yeah, more on that later now. We get these quick and dirty fun questions in, but we always find some commentary to saddle around them. What is the longest modeling session you've ever done, dave?

I can answer that question and I can't do this anymore.

I have gotten to the point where I literally I can only model for about an hour, hour and a half till I have to walk away from the bench and even if it's just get away for 45 minutes and stretch and all before I can go back.

But a number of years ago I was on the unofficial Airfix modeling forum the unofficial Airfix modeling forum and they had a tradition on there called a blitz bow, where you would build a model, start to finish in either 24 straight hours or you could do what they call the, the wussy split spell, which is what I did, which is two 12-hour sessions back to back on two days. Like you would take a weekend where the wife and children have gone off to visit somebody, so you had an entire weekend and you would start at like six o'clock in the morning and go to six o'clock that night and then you pick it up again that next day and do another 12 hour session. I did that successfully twice, once with a Hasegawa F4U Corsair Chris and once with a Airfix Spitfire Mark 19. And I'm not sure I could do that again. That was 10 or 12 years ago, I'm not sure that I could do that now at my current age, because I don't have that stamina that would let me sit at a bench and work constantly like that.

I can only think of the funniest one that I was involved with.

That's a different wheel question.

But go ahead. I want to hear this.

It was certainly. It was a few. Definitely before COVID, my local hobby shop had a build night, so local modders would come in. He would keep the store open. Of course the public couldn't come in and there was a series of benches in the back and we could all build together. But you know what these types of things are. It's mostly social and you bring a kit and there's a lot of talking, a lot of banter, this sort of thing.

And at the time he had an employee who would leave halfway through the night, wave to us and the owner would come back from his house and shut it down a couple hours later. Well, a couple hours later, and he didn't show up. And we're sort of looking at each other around the table as we're sort of still building and looking at our watches and this sort of thing, and he's not coming. And he's not coming. Now, subset to the story, this was during football season, we'll just say that, and so I think it was sometime past midnight. The owner finally came. We didn't know how to contact him. We certainly didn't know how to lock the door or set the alarm or anything like that, and, as it turns out, he fell asleep. So we were there for I don't know five or six hours in his store, not knowing if we were going to be able to go home that night. But I already had my spot staked out where I would sleep for the night if I had to.

And you didn't none of you looted the store, no, but we certainly took a look at many, many models. That's what we did.

Good for you. Well, I know many times in my single days I've had easily 12-hour sessions like 9 am to midnight, yeah, with modest breaks in there. So yeah, could I do it now? Maybe. But my problem now is my neck starts getting stiff and I've got to do some stretches my neck and my back. You know Terry Wilkinson, our listener. Terry Wilkinson is a yoga guy. Maybe we should get some tips from him on how to stay flexible during these long modeling sessions.

Maybe we can get him to put on a seminar at the next Nationals, a yoga seminar.

All right, well, let's spin the wheel, man Spin it. Nationals a yoga seminar? All right, well, let's spin the wheel, man spin it. Oh man, do? The judging rules naturally favor less complex subjects. Could this be why we see the same kits being entered again and again with so few magnum opus builds on the table? Yes and yes. Well, since you've offered that flesh it out.

Okay, I'm speaking of the IPMS USA national rules. I'm speaking about one, two, three categories and the IPMS rules as they currently exist, where the judges look for flaws in the build. Those rules as they currently exist certainly do encourage people to build very, very safely. This is a distinction that you see a lot in Europe as opposed to the US. From my understanding, from what people have told me of European contests, in the aircraft categories you see a lot more open panels and stuff like that where the kit has been surgically modified, whereas if you go to the IPMS Nationals and you go to the 48 scale single engine World War II aircraft categories, it is Tamiya, tamiya, tamiya, edward, tamiya, edward, edward the same kits built beautifully. None of this is to disparage beautiful builds, either out of the box or nearly out of the box builds of really well-engineered kits, of really well-engineered kids. And yeah, it encourages some generic appearance in some categories and I think that's a problem and it's a problem that they're trying to find an answer to Chris.

how's things in Canada in this regard?

I would say they're largely the same. I might categorize it slightly differently by saying it doesn't encourage risk-taking. How about that?

Yeah, I think that's in the spirit of this question.

So the closer you can start to perfection, it's easier to get to perfection. Quote, unquote, right? So yeah, you start with your high-end kit, you apply everything to meet a standard and do you shoot for the stars as the average builder do. That you know that there's always going to be some participants who these rules really don't apply to right, like they're just going to show up with a scratch built. You know what am I talking about? A scratch built triplane from the 1920s, where everything was from a country that doesn't exist anymore. You know what I mean. And they're going out on the table and it's absolutely amazing. But you're right For the average show participant. I, but you're right for the average show participant. I think you're right. There's no encouragement to necessarily take a risk to open up all the panels and do all the inside because you know one of those panels is slightly off, right, if one of those things is slightly too thick, you know, or you get dinged for scale thickness, or that's right, yeah, absolutely.

And and people, especially people, building for the contest. Now there are a lot of modelers who enter contests who don't build for the contest, they just build and whatever they built they take. That's right, though those people this doesn't apply to, but there are people who build specifically for taking a certain model to a certain contest and, yeah, the current rules as they exist, they discourage that, discourage the risk-taking.

Yeah, I think this question has to be taken in the vein of current IPMS national rules, yeah, which are pushed down to the regional and invitational level generally. It's kind of a loaded question too, I guess, but you know, I think we answered that honestly. The answer is yeah, we think that it does do that, and the solution to this is open to debate.

Yep, yep. I think that there are efforts now, both inside the IPMS National Contest Committee in judging, to try and alter what is considered, to maybe alter that paradigm, and there are other clubs trying different things to again alter that paradigm. And it'll be I mean, that's the experimentation will in theory, if you're a good Republican, subsidiarist, the thousand flowers blooming will ultimately lead to the best system or best systems, and so I'm happy to see it.

Do you remember the Tamiya F4? That was done to absolute scale perfection. Or do you remember that 1920s scratch-built auto gyro?

Absolutely.

That has all the panels open, all the wiring ripped open and everything. Which one do you remember when you go to see these shows?

That's a very, very good point. That is an extremely good point, chris. I will tell you I've been to 27 or so nationals so many you can't remember, so many I can't remember. I go back and count whenever I want the accurate number. I can tell you the models that I remember, the ones from contests 20 years ago that I still remember Were magnum opus builds. Every one of them was a magnum opus build where somebody who clearly loved the subject just absolutely went in one form or another. Bat crap crazy. In one form or another bat crap crazy. And whether it was doing a downed aircraft doing, I still remember the YB-17 that was at one of the Virginia Beach Nationals. There was a beautiful build of a British bomber with all of the engines and panels opened up in a hangar. Those are the ones you remember. You do not remember the really perfectly built F-4 or Focke-Wulf 190 that looked like every other one on the table 190, that looked like every other one on the table.

Well, in the words of a folksy rock star who was really bad at riding a motorcycle at times they are a-changing. They are indeed. I'm surprised this came up, chris, because it kind of feeds back into the one before, the one we just talked about, model club or show hilarity, the funniest things you've experienced in this regard. Oh God, whose turn.

Is it to go first? Let Chris go first. I'm just already thinking of the one.

But he's got a best what he just talked about, the shop that would never close.

Well, I can tell you another one. This one's fairly short. Same group of guys, same build night. This is actually when I first met Evan McCallum, panzermeister, 36. Back when he used to come, he was a young guy about 15 years old, but there was another young guy, he still is.

Well, he isn't 15, I'll say that. Another young guy that was there and he was building armor and I noticed about halfway through the evening that he had a very strange pose, like he was building with one hand while his other hand was laying flat on the workbench. I didn't think much of it until I saw him try to lift his hand up and the poor guy crazy, glued his hand to the table. But I think that's all happened to us at least once where we've glued something that we shouldn't have the next time. Two weeks later, same group of guys and from the corner of the room, I heard him say oh damn it, I did it again.

He needed a little mentorship yeah, he needed somebody to help.

Evan never glued anything to the table.

Well, that's good.

He should glue that guy's head to the table.

There you go, dave. Oh God, I've got so many of these. We could go all night, but I'll mention one. Does it involve me? No, it does not involve you. Aw, I promise man. Okay, back when the Brian's Model Shop was— Scale Reproductions Scale Reproductions was scale reproductions, scale reproductions. It was started in the basement of our our club founder, dr terry hill's chiropractic office, and it was a hobby shop in a partially, partially finished basement and we had a couple of tables that we built out of scrap wood that we'd use for club meetings. But we also would hold what was known then as the Dusk to Dawn Modelthon, which is now more colloquially known as the Friday Night Fights.

This is a whole other story.

Yeah, which is a whole other story. But the Dusk to Dawn Modelthon, the idea was that we would gather at like nine o'clock on a Friday night and we would start modeling and you'd model for as long as you could go and the goal was for the real hardcore guys was to model all night long without falling asleep, because if you fell asleep they were going to do something to you. So you would model all night until noon the next day because at noon on Saturday the microbrewery, the Bluegrass Brewing Company, which was two blocks away from Terry's office, two blocks away from Terry's office, would open up and everybody would go over there for lunch and beers. And we were doing the Dust to Dawn Model-Thon in the basement one Friday night and this was in winter and one of the members of our club, john Dietrich he is an amateur chef but he is a really good amateur chef and John brought some I think it was pork chops and at six o'clock in the morning it's snowing and we go out on the front porch of Terry's office with this little mint charcoal mini grill and we get the grill going and we're standing around cooking pork chops at six o'clock in the morning when the saint matthews police roll by and that cop stops and looks at us and we look at him and we look like four home.

You know, in in certain movies where you have a scene, usually in Philadelphia, of four guys standing around a 55-gallon drum with a fire and they're singing doo-wop music. That is what we looked like, except we were four scraggly guys around a little charcoal grill cooking pork chops at six o'clock in the morning. Why we did it, I have no idea. I have no idea what the cop thought it, just it's one of those weird memories that I will treasure forever funny you should say John Dietrich, because mine also involves John.

Okay, for a while. Funny you should say john dietrich, because mine also involves john. Okay, and it kind of ties into the william adair episode at the 1 to 144 scale builds. Okay, we had a meeting at the same chiropractic office and a member of mmcl who's at that time at an advanced age, probably pushing 80 or maybe past 80, brought in his entire collection of 1 to 144 scale airplanes. I remember this and he was giving a presentation on this collection and to give a little reference to the overall build quality of this, he had the name of the aircraft cut from the instruction sheet scotch tape to the underside of one of the wings on all these aircraft. And I remember John, who was just king of the deadpan, looked at him and asked him how many boxes of cereal he had to eat to get all of those. I will never, never, ever forget that.

Yes, I remember that Because the owner of this collection did not get it at all and I was it went over it I was about to piss my pants it went over his head and this guy was to keep in mind.

He was a modeler from another era and he was very, very proud of having built this entire grouping of models. It was like 50 or 60 airplanes.

Yes, that's a lot.

It took him a long time and John, who has a really really, really dry sense of humor, dropped it. And you were trying not to laugh because you didn't, because john wasn't laughing right, you didn't. You didn't want to embarrass the guy, but it was really funny oh man, let's, let's move on I remember that how big is your stash?

setting all reality aside, do you want to build everything in your stash? Someday I'll start yeah, yes, I want to, or I wouldn't have bought it. That, yeah, that that goes without saying. But I don't know. I had a lot, then I sold lot and now I started a podcast. And now I'm going back the other way. I think I have a modest about 225 kids. Is that modest? I don't know.

Chris, what about you?

That's well-controlled Chris. What about you?

Certainly well-controlled for some. I was up over 200 a couple years ago. I'm now down to about 30, so I got rid of, oh wow, quite a few, and I think it answers, you're gonna say 199 yeah, me too.

No, no, I got down to about 30, and I think it sort of answers the second part of the question, which was I? I really well, after packing them and moving them, I came to realize that I was not going to be building them. Quite a few of them. I just sort of lost interest in. You buy it, you have these great thoughts and you have a great plan, and then you just change your. You change your build theme, you change your, you've already built it. Whatever reason, we buy a lot of these things because they're good bargains too. Right, so it's a good bargain, but you really, you know, you just bought it because it was cheap. You didn't necessarily buy it because you had this great project in mind. But anyway, long story short, I'm down to about 25 to 30 and, yeah, I'll probably get to all these.

These are ones I'm most interested in yeah, well, you're still a young man, so you, you, you definitely can knock all those out, even at your current build pace. Well, at one time, my stash was over 1,000 kits. Wow, it is less than that. Now, if I haven't done a count recently, I am betting that if I did a count, that it would come in at a number somewhere near 500 or 600. Come in at a number somewhere near five or 600. And heck, yes, I plan on not dying before I build every one of these kits, which means that I will live to be about 455 years old. That's fair, yeah, which? This is my plan for immortality. God's not going to take me until I built every one of these kits. This is going to keep me alive for another couple of hundred years.

All right, let's spin it again. What new genre or area would you like to see manufacturers expand into? This is a good one. I like this. This is easy.

And then you go first Dave. Well, they're doing it already. 72nd scale armor. 72nd scale armor is absolutely a hot hot area genre and scale. It has so many advantages when a 35th scale armor kit can be easily $120, $130, or more, when you can buy a really nice Vespid King Tiger for $19, and the fidelity of scale is, while it's not 35th scale, it's awfully darn good for 72nd scale. And there is all of this stuff that's not been done in 72nd scale in armor and soft skins that's been done in larger scale. So in theory it only needs to be shrunk down in order to do it. The manufacturers who are currently doing a lot of 72nd scale releases Vespid, flyhawk etc. Are doing really fantastic engineering and so I think that is the single hottest. Well, gundams are the single hottest by far, and then maybe Warhammer, but as far as the traditional modeling genres, 72nd scale armor to me is the hottest current modeling genre and I'm happy as heck about it.

Chris Dave failed because none of that's new.

It's a hard question.

It's new-ish.

It's new-ish.

Well, okay, if you're going to pick something that's already going on, what, in addition to what's going on, should they start delving into? You're done, dave. Okay, chris rescue me.

I'll try, from the disdain of my podcast.

I just think you like 72nd scale armor. Oh, I do that's it.

There you go.

I think that for me, what I would like to see them get back into is Vietnam era aircraft. Back into is Vietnam era aircraft. So I've only recently started to get an awakening of this whole era, of this whole set of different types of airplane, everything from from piston props to turbo props, to supersonic jets and everything in between. There's a whole era there that I'm only scratching the surface of and I'm just finding it fascinating. We're talking a 20-year air war, if you really think about it. I'm scratching the surface, I'm getting interested in it. I wish, maybe, that this became a rejuvenation of that genre.

Well, it is in some respects in 70, again 72nd scale, God's one true scale, with fine molds releasing the entire F4 series. I mean, much of that is focused on Vietnam. So, yeah, you know what? I think there is a revival in interest in the Vietnam War, and so I would not be surprised to see your wish come true.

Well, we're starting to get far enough away from it that you can take a I don't even know what to call it. More clinical view. A more clinical view. That's a good way to say it, I agree. Well, for me it's another easy one. And the genre is there. It's just the material within that genre is not there. I think if Bandai or whoever currently or in the future has the Star Wars license, started releasing 35th scale figure kits of the primary combatants in the Star Wars universe, they could print their own money.

That is a great Bravo. I will give you the award for best answer to this question. You are absolutely correct.

If Imperial Stormtroopers and the rebel fleet troopers, rebel indoor commandos, whatever all of it. Yes, like airfix, multipose, or or just straight up six, four to six figure sets. Yep, I mean you're, you're printing your own money, man it's a license to print money now, I know, and some of this, some of this exists in 3d print already, but you know if you could get in plastic, oh yeah, so much easier for so more, so much more accessible to more people, or even even 3d printed masters into resin figures uh, yeah, but I'm thinking mainstream man.

I think this is got to be Bandai or somebody like that.

You're right Bandai would be printing their own money.

And that's my answer. That's a good one.

Bravo, that was a great one.

We just need to spin the wheel and move on. Then that's so damn good. Take your win of the more basic model construction and finishing skills. What gives you the?

most trouble and why chris decals?

wow, I had to put 75 cents of my dollar on on that chip every single time. Yeah decals.

Why? Mainly because it's for me. I just can never get consistency. I'm getting better at it, but I just find it that to get that painted on, look it's, it's, roll the dice, roll the dice is your dice roll, dealing primarily using what's offered to you in the kit?

Cause I think if you would go after market across the board, you could kind of you could kind of normalize that one out of the equation.

That that loads the dice somewhat, for sure, but even, even still, it's, it's, and you know it's might even be a mental thing, it's an apprehension thing. I get to this stage. I've I've had failures at this stage, and so I work it up. But just in the last couple of years I did pretty well with a few of my builds in terms of getting to decals. But that's the one part that still eludes me in terms of confidence. I could do everything else fairly competently, but decals. I have to cross my fingers and pray to the, the model gods that they, that they come out looking good that day and that is so weird to me because that to me is the easiest thing in modeling.

But I'm putting now, I will, I will. I will nod to what Mike said because I use almost exclusively aftermarket decals and I'm here to say decaling to me is the easiest and funnest part of any build, although I'm beginning to enjoy construction more and more as I get older. To me, panel line re-scribing and that is by far the skill that eludes me I'm getting better, in fact, my current SAM, I am really happy with the re-scribing that I did on the panel line. So I'm pleased that I seem to be making progress, but for me, by far that is the most difficult single skill.

Well, I'm with Chris and I think mentally you think this should be easy and I think you can kind of curate it in that direction with the decals you choose to apply. But it's the the thinking it should be easy versus like the entire painting process. But when it's not, you can really screw things up and it's a it's kind of it can be a hard recovery if, if you, if you mess it up, if the decals don't cooperate and you, you don't get them off fast enough, they get really hard to get off and I just think, yeah, I think decals could be, could be the thing that could be the hardest yeah, it just, it's for.

And this this just goes to show you what variation there is in modeling, because to me, decals are the easiest part of the build and, with rare exception, I've never had a failure and even when I've had a failure, the ability to correct it was simple, and so different strokes for different folks.

In that regard, Well, explain it this way, Dave. I built a fine molds. It was called the kamikaze, but it was a Japanese civilian race airplane. It was by fine molds and 48 scale.

Oh yeah.

The Babs, the.

KI-15 or the C-5M2, if you're talking Navy.

So I put the decals on that and they went on without. I didn't use any solutions, I didn't use anything. They went right in the panel lines. It was like they were painted on. It was. It was a dream, right.

Yeah.

And then when I built the SR-71 and I did use Caracal aftermarket decals you know I had to. I mean, I did the whole hot water thing, I did the whole hot rag pressing it into the panel lines, solutions and saws, and yes, I got them to work. But boy was that ever a different experience getting those things to cooperate.

At least part of that has to do with the different surface challenge. The surface of an sr71 is a whole lot more challenging for decaling because of that corrugated type surface. And who's you say you use Caracals decals for the SR-71?

I did.

Okay, I will say that I think one of my successes with decals is that for a large, large part, I almost always use aftermarket decals, and aftermarket decals almost always are better than whatever comes in the kit.

Time to spin the wheel. All right, what is your best learning experience with a kit?

Every kit is a learning experience.

It could go a lot of ways.

Yeah.

Well, I'll start because I think mine's pretty easy. Having not built an aircraft kit in darn near 40 years, my Fujimi E16 Paul is a vast learning experience.

Or relearning experience.

Yeah, a lot of it's relearning, but I've also done a lot of stuff I would never have even thought about doing back when I would have built this, when this was kind of the thing I was building regularly. What about?

you, dave. Every model for me is learning experience, partly because of my modeling philosophy. Every model that I build, I want to try two things. One I want to make it better than the model that I just previously finished.

And two actually finishing it.

Well, okay, yeah, thank you. All right, Take your shots, but to make the model in my opinion, in my subjective opinion better than the model that I finished previously. I don't always accomplish that. There are many models where I finish and it's not better than what I've done before, and to me that's a failure. The other thing that I do want with every model is to try something new, to concentrate on either a new painting technique, a new decaling technique, a new something. Right now, the last couple of models I've built and this applies to the A7M2 SAM is I concentrated quite specifically on seams and panel lines Getting the seams good and getting the panel lines, particularly where they had to be restored, getting them to look like the engraving on the rest of the kit. And, like I said, I'm pretty happy right now. We'll see as time goes on, but right now I'm pretty happy with the way things are.

Chris, I think the best learning experience would have to be, at least recently, would be the Revell SR-71 Blackbird that I did a couple of years ago In a slight video plug at the end of most of my videos I tell everyone keep building, keep taking risks and try new things, and on that one, what I was really trying to do was to mimic an actual used SR-71, but not necessarily just you know weathering for the sake of weathering. It was comparing period photographs or very high resolution photographs of blackbirds that are, you know, in use, and so that was a big learning experience in terms of being able to try some new products, try to apply them in a subtle way but very obvious that this thing was definitely a used aircraft and not necessarily splashing my model with a pile of you know aftermarket weathering pastes and wiping it off, really focusing on what I wanted to achieve and match in terms of what I was seeing in terms of pictures. I think that build video sequence of my Blackbird was one that really I learned a lot from.

Well, in regard to that one, one of the things that that video makes clear is something that is not intuitive, which is painting black is not really as easy as you think it should be, especially black in an attempt to mimic the actual black paint on an actual aircraft.

right, right, it's, it's in in very little way black yeah, if you were to take just straight black spray paint, you'd end up with a silhouette, you wouldn't end up with something with a lot of detail.

Right, and I think that's counterintuitive. I think a lot of people think black is easy to paint, and no, it is not.

All right, guys, I think this needs to be the last spin. All right, spin away. Oh, and a good one? Oh good, what is the most needed kit in your specific area of interest? Easy for me, dave.

Privateer PB4. Oh yes, pb4 Y2. In 70-second scale. In 70-second scale, without a doubt, because the only thing we've all got is the old matchbox kit and the amount of work required. It can be turned into a beautiful kit. I have seen some builds of that thing that are stunning, but the amount of work required to do that is prohibitive. We need a brand new mold. Privateer Chris.

I have to agree with that one. I'll add we need a 48 scale Corsair Dash 4. There you go. That would be a wonderful, wonderful one to have and because of my new Vietnam War interest, I'd love to see a 72nd scale F-111, f-111a. I have the Hasagawa kit. We'll get into that, but something brand new tool for the F-111,. That would be fantastic.

Yeah, I agree. I wholeheartedly endorse his choices and I'd also like to see that F-4U-4 in 72nd scale along with an F4U7.

Well, for me, I've got to pick the armor subjects and it's still. I've beat this drum since we started this podcast, dave. That's really really sad. Hobby Boss, you need to finish the Soviet T-26 series and release a model 1939 with a slope hull and turret armor. Why have you not done that yet?

They've got about 75% of the parts right Right.

And on that same vein you've released three versions of the Soviet BT-2 fast tank, along with a couple of really obscure one-off, two-off, three-off, not serial production type self-propelled guns. We need a BT-5. The last BT-2 you did is like 75% of the way there. Push it over the edge, Do a BT-5. You're leaving money on the table. There was way more BT-5s than any of those last two self-propelled guns you even thought about doing. So that's where I'm at with that.

So BT-5, late T-26, would both be very welcome with World War II enthusiasts. And no one else has ever done one. It's a Larry BT-5 that's got a bunch of warts, but the late T-26 has only been done in resin aftermarket. Oh, okay, so they've done many versions of the T-26, just not the last one Makes no sense. All right, well, that is the wheel of accidental wisdom for this installment. I hope we've had some accidental wisdom. I think we have.

Yep, I think we have too. What do you think, chris?

I definitely think so. I hope we answered some some questions properly at least yeah, I hope so.

So, folks, we, we want to do this again. It'll be several months down the road, but if you like this format, send us some more questions and we'll work them into the wheel and, uh, we'll get them on the show. We've we've taken care about half the submissions in in current installment, so let's see some more.

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Well, I was born in 1968.

Oh, yeah, rub it in.

Chris is younger than me Ben's top halftime report. Chris, what are you working?

on. I'm working on the kinetic CF-104. I got some belcher bits and it's going to be the nuclear armed version and what's sort of keeping me keeping me from finishing it is that I want to do a bare metal finish on it and, as you know, this requires quite a bit of precision before you can, you know, lay down the out, glad or whatever. However, you're going to tackle that. And the one thing about the Connecticut which is very strange is, you know, you open the. This is why I don't like open box reviews.

But you, you, you see the kit. Inside of it. It looks fantastic and I'd say about 75% of the build. Everything goes together like a Swiss watch. But then I just ran into these really strange gaps and it could be me, but it could also be the kit. At any rate, I had to do a lot of gap filling and sanding and polishing to get it down Absolutely perfect, before I had the confidence to put some some black gloss on it and to get the uh, the bare metal finish started. So I hope to have that finished at some point soon and that's what's going to add in the aqua gloss that we were talking about earlier, because I'm going to, of course, put decals on that and use aqua gloss at the end.

Now you're not being held up by the installation of Hobby Studio version 2.0. You still have the ability to move forward on this while that's all going on I'm still.

I still have my bench in the in the furnace room, though cramped and uncomfortable it is dave, what do you got going on?

uh well, I've got the sam firmly in the paint booth. The underside color is on the top side color is about to go on. Then gloss decals, gloss flat and I'm done. So I hope it goes that quickly. I don't know that it will, but it's moving along. In addition, the Musaru build has started. So at a very, very early stage and because I purchased an aftermarket set for the Musaru build, it's going to be a little more of a complex build than it otherwise would be, because there's not that huge number of parts to this kit but the aftermarket set I've got has you doing a lot of photo etch and a lot of changes etc. So we'll see. But I got to get moving on it because March is going to be here before I blink my eye and that's about it?

Well, I finally made progress on the E16. I've got the gloss coat on the aircraft. And what did you use for gloss? I used Mr Color GX100 on this plane, dave. How did you like it? I liked it a lot. I mean, if I take a clear coat and I thin the crap out of it with leveling thinner, it's going to spray pretty good. Oh yeah, I think there's not a lot of chance for error if you do that. Now, I thin pretty far down. I'm probably. If I had to guess, I was probably 80% thinner, 20% GX100 on this thing.

Wow.

That is thin, because I usually go 60-40 or 70-30.

So yeah, you really did thin it down.

Yeah, I like thin it down because it's going to spray. Good, if you do that. Well, at least with the way I'm doing it. Yeah, and you know I'm ready to get cracking on the decals. I'm probably going to start with the pontoon floats. They've got the warning stripes on the pontoon floats and I don't know why I didn't just see it up front. But you know, after you step back and look at where the stripes are on the pontoons, it all makes sense. The big stripe on the front of the most forward stripe on the pontoon is the propeller zone Right. The most forward stripe on the pontoon is the propeller zone Right, and then the two that are after that are the locations of the main pontoon struts.

Yep.

So it tells you where all the structure or the crap you don't want to engage with is on the aircraft. So with that, I'm going to start with the white trim film from Microscale and then put the center reds in with the red trim film and I'll probably start there and just work my way up through and then start with the National Insignia.

And then start picking out the tail codes with the aviology set that, inch High, had loaned me.

Well, now have you settled on your decal, solvent what you're going to use, you know I Sol and set or it's going to be sol and set, because I'm pretty much replacing all the decals with aftermarket decals and I know that stuff's going to work.

It does work. That is the beauty of it. It is With the right decals. I know that stuff's going to work. It does work. That is the beauty of it. It is with the right decals right, yes, that's right.

Those products won't touch some of the 1995 and before japanese kit decals right those decals will mock those solutions yes, absolutely.

That's when you have to go to the angry solutions.

And they'll mock some of those too.

Yeah.

That Walters Solvacet stuff.

Yes, that's when you're angry at the decal. Yeah, I'm going to show you. So, chris, have you been spending any money on models lately?

Yes, I have been, Dave, I definitely have been.

Please tell us about it.

In the last couple months, I'd say last six weeks I've picked up actually four, which is a little bit unusual for me. I have an ICM B-26 counter-invader.

Oh yes.

I picked up the F-111A by Hasegawa, the Vietnam War boxing. I had to get the Border Kate in 35th scale.

Oh, my God.

It's a bit large for me, but those panels and overlapping joins and everything that is really cool. It's all oil-panned I had to get it. Have you looked at how big that kid is? It's a Japanese plane. They're diminutive by nature. They're small.

No, not the Kate's.

Huge. It's about the size of a 48th Corsair.

I mean, come on Well, the Kate was, believe it or not, the size of the Mosquito. The wingspan is almost the same as a mosquito. Well, it still looks great.

Yeah, oh God, no question about that Well, there's all the reason you need.

Yeah, exactly.

And the last one I got is the Arma P39Q, which I think has some Guadalcanal markings on it and I haven't figured out exactly what I want to do with it, but I definitely want to have something either Guadalcanal or something in the Pacific Southwest.

Those are all good choices. I applaud all of those choices. What have you bought, dave? Well, I've been on a little bit of spending spree. First of all, my aftermarket that I purchased right after the Nationals for the Moosaroo build, after spending a month circling New York, finally showed up. It's really gorgeous, so I'm really happy about that. Thanks to Steve Husted, I ended up going to the local hobby shop, scale Reproductions and picking up the Edward Royal Class ME109G10 box of dual boxing and I purchased that. And while I was at Brian's he had restocked on Mr Color Leveling Thinner and Mr Surfacer 1500 Black in the Jar, and so I bought both of those because those are items that at Bryan's, when they're in, you go ahead and get them because you may not be there when you need them.

There's a company called Hamilton Books that Inch High turned me on to and I get their emails regularly and, to be honest with you, I generally don't buy from them, from their regular, their normal stock that is for sale, but every once in a while they will send out an email where they're blowing out books. They will send out an email where they're blowing out books, and some of the books they have a good selection of history and World War I and World War II, aircraft, armor, ships, etc. Every once in a while, one of those Anatomy of the Ship books that are $60 or $70 books they'll have for $10. They're great're great, great deals. Well, a recent email I got from them a 60 dollar kagero book on doiner aircraft operated by yugoslavia was marked down to $5.95.

Now, this is not my particular area of interest, but it is Scott King's, one of Scott King's many particular areas of interest. And I saw that and I was like, oh heck, for $5.95 shipping, I'm going to buy that for Skippy. And ended up buying it, was able to give it to him, made his day and it cost me relatively nothing in the scheme of things. I mean, that was less than a trip to McDonald's. Let's see what else have I bought? Anything else? I think that's everything. It's everything that pops to mind recently. Mike, have you spent any model money?

Not much. I'm saving up for the MMCL show man.

I thought so. See, I've kind of blown my wad, so I've got a thin wallet for the MMCL show.

I may be on the prowl for tamiya zeros at the automatic buy price well, I bought all the the striping from anis models in germany to to do the striping on the e16, hopefully, and I may have talked about it already, but that's just really nice, I think. What else I picked up? I picked up the decal solution from AK it's stuff that's allegedly really really hot, yep. And on the paint mule the Fujimi decals mock that stuff.

No kidding.

No kidding man.

Did you find anything that affected those 90s Fujimi decals, Believe it or not?

the micro-scale set and solve worked the best, which surprised me.

Yeah.

But I'm not going to be using those decals anyway, so it's kind of a moot point. We'll move on to some more cartograph-type stuff to use on the actual model. So I know the set and solve will work like gangbusters on those products, so we'll see where we end up. Other than that trim film to finish out my pontoon stripes, that's really about it. I've not bought too much lately.

Well, I'm going to see you Saturday and I'm going to make sure you put a crowbar in that wallet and you pick out some stuff. Maybe something for Chris. Hey, chris, are you looking for anything? Because last time Mike went to the MMCL show he bought something for Evan, so I think it's only fair that this time he buys something for you.

I'd have to think about it, but no, nothing comes to mind. Nothing comes to mind.

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Well, mike, we're almost at the end of the episode and I am definitely at the end of my modeling fluid. It was Country Boy Brewing out of Lexington, kentucky, king Meat Double Dry Hopped, new England IPA, 7% alcohol by volume, and I got to say really good, very reminiscent of the Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA, a little bit less strong in the alcohol content, but the taste profile was very, very similar. I would definitely drink that again. How about you?

Chris, how's the NyQuil?

That's going to happen in about 10 minutes. I can tell you the tea went down very, very nicely.

Now, what kind of tea? Earl Grey English breakfast, english breakfast Good choice, good choice.

Well, my Cooper's Craft Barrel Reserve. This is a Brown and Foreman product out of Louisville, kentucky. I picked this one up because you know it's well, it's bourbon, so it's oak-barreled, but it's the chiseled and charred collection. So what they do is they char the barrel, then they chisel it out. You know, roughing up the inside of the barrel to give more surface area for the liquid to contact, in theory and in practice it imparts a lot more opportunity for the liquid to pick up a lot of flavor from the barrel. This stuff's 100 proof and it's surprisingly smooth for a 100 proof. It really doesn't have an alcohol bite at all, but I think they come up a little short on their flavor profile. So it's kind of a mixed bag.

Do you think a little more aging might help?

I don't know if it's an aging or not. It could be, yeah, I mean that never hurts, right. But if they're going to tout the conditioning of the barrel after charring and to have kind of a meh flavor profile, I mean it's all there. I mean it's bourbon for sure, but it's just not distinct. There's no aha, there's no wow. Okay, there's nothing unexpected. So it's pretty run of the mill. As far as flavor is concerned, which that that part was a little disappointment I was pleased that the, the hunter proof, had absolutely zero heat, that is. That is surprising.

So there you go. Cooper's craft. I'll give a recommendation with that caveat, but it's, it's not one I'm going to add to the rotation, not yet, anyway.

Gotcha, anyway, gotcha. Now we truly are at the end of the episode and the only thing left is shout outs, and I'd like to go first and shout out our guest, mr Chris Wallace.

Oh man, that's, that's easy peasy, yeah Right.

Chris, thank you for coming on.

Thank you for participating, it's been much too long and thank you for setting up our Airbnb for Heritage.

I was getting there. I was getting there. In addition to being a great modeler and a great friend, chris also does a really fantastic job of handling the Airbnb for HeritageCon. When we go up to HeritageCon, chris has secured the Airbnb and every time he's done it he's gotten a great property at a good price. It's because of him the Canadian dojo turns out to be a really good dojo experience. So thanks on all those counts, chris.

Well, you're welcome and thanks for having me on. This is great, and also thanks for shouting me out for all these years on your podcast. It's very flattering and really appreciated.

No, absolutely.

Well, your stuff's really good, your content's really good, and it's an easy thing to do for us because it's good.

Yes, In fact, just the other day I went back and re-watched your video on painting engines and that's a really well done video.

And he learned twice as much as he did the first time I did, Absolutely.

Of course, you know the way my brain absorbs knowledge.

Well, I'm going to shout out all those folks who help us along, dave with your generosity.

We need those people.

All those people who contribute, either via Patreon or PayPal or buy me a coffee or even the merchandise store, greatly appreciated, especially right now because we are investing in a new platform for our content delivery and it all helps in ways you can't even imagine. So thank you, folks, for your generosity. If anyone would like to contribute along those lines, if you go to the latest episode of Plastic Model Mojo, in the show notes you should find links to Patreon, paypal, buy Me a Coffee and the Plastic Model Mojo merchandise store. All those avenues help us bring this content to you and it's just greatly appreciated and really flattering all the folks who contribute with their generosity. So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Well, chris, thanks for joining us again at Plasma Auto Mojo, and we certainly look forward to the next time we see you face to face, which should be all fingers and toes crossed.

It should be this summer. No, actually, what am I talking about?

It'll be in HeritageCon in a few months.

What are we talking about?

Yeah, no, we'll get to HeritageCon well before we get to fete you around Hampton Roads and Virginia Beach and teach you how to pick a crab and eat raw oysters and all that sort of thing. Well, that'll be fun, you'll enjoy that as long. Well, that'll be fun, you'll enjoy that.

As long as you don't get food poisoning.

Hey.

Well, chris, thanks for joining us again. It's a pleasure to have you on here and we appreciate your insight into all the wheel questions and all the listener mail and all that.

You're very welcome. Can I do one correction though, before I go? Yes, I did say that the Ottawa Scale Auto Contest was on Saturday September 28th. It's actually Sunday September 29th and it's at nine to four at 2100 Walkley Road here in Ottawa. So I will be there, at least for the morning. And it's a contest, but it's not just for scale autos, it's for all models, all types, and it is not IPMS judged, it is participant judged, so the people who bring a model can judge the winners. It's done by popular vote.

Well, we'll expect to see plenty of pictures in the dojo.

Will do.

All right, dave, as we always say so many kits, so little time, mike. All right, Dave, as we always say so many kits, so little time, mike. All right, dave, I will see you Saturday.

That's right. Bright and early. I expect you in town early.